Every year, digital cameras get better and take higher resolution photos. With the higher resolution, comes larger picture files. These higher resolution pictures can make printed pictures look nicer. But you don’t need large pictures if you want to simply email them to friends.

Not everyone has high speed internet. In fact, I tell people with dial up internet to configure their system to not download large emails. And those large photos are often not easily viewed even for those with high speed internet.

There are several options that you can use to share your photos. There are many photo sharing sites (Picasa Web, Shutterfly, snapfish, flickr, myphotoalbum, webshots, fotki just to name a few) that allow you to upload your files, then you can simply email the link to your pictures. That is the method I recommend most people use.

But if you don’t want to do that, you can use a feature built into Windows XP to share your photos, and make sure everyone you send them to, can enjoy them. Here are the steps to follow.

1. Click Start | All Programs | Accessories | Windows Explorer

   

1. Navigate to the folder or CD that has the photos your want to email

   

1. On the menu, select View, Thumbnails

   

1. Click on the picture you want to email. To send more than one picture, after you click on the first one, hold the Ctrl key down and click on the additional pictures you want to send.

1. Then right-click on one of the selected picture(s), then click Send To | Mail Recipient

   

1. A “Send Pictures via E-Mail” dialog box will appear. Make sure the “Make all pictures smaller” option is selected then click OK.

   

1. This will open a new email message similar to this.

   

1. Enter the email address of the person you want to send this to.

1. You can leave the subject line as is, but I would recommend you change it to something more meaningful.

1. You can leave the text of the message as is, but I would recommend you change it to something more meaningful.

1. Click the Send button.

Now your friend will receive an email that is small, downloadable, and viewable on most computer screens.

From Windows Client Update Newsletter August 18, 2006

Tip–Viewing Images in Windows XP

If you’ve been unable to view images with Windows XP’s Windows Picture and Fax Viewer and you can’t see thumbnails when you’re browsing folders that contain images, it’s because the OS has lost the proper registration of the Shimgvw.dll file. To fix this problem, do the following:

1. Close all Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE) windows.
2. Click Start, Run.
3. In the Run dialog box, type

   regsvr32 /s %systemroot%\system32\shimgvw.dll

4. Click OK.

At this point, you should be able to view thumbnails properly. To check that the viewer works correctly, do the following:

1. Open a folder that contains images.
2. Right-click an image.
3. Select Preview from the context menu.

–contributed by David Chernicoff

Source: WinXPnews February 27, 2006 Newsletter

Note: Below is copied directly from the newsletter. Yahoo certainly doesn’t make it easy to escape their “Web Beacons”.

We’ve had a few questions lately about Yahoo’s use of Web beacons, which track Yahoo Groups’ users website visits. This is stated on their Privacy Policy page, in the “Cookies” section. Web beacons are small electronic files that are used to count and recognize users for purposes such as personalizing your pages and conducting research.

You can opt out of other companies’ cookies by going to the Privacy Policy page at Yahoo! Privacy Center Web Beacons and clicking Cookies in the left column. Scroll down to “Other Companies’ Cookies on Yahoo!” and click “Other companies” under that. Then scroll to the third paragraph and click “web beacon.”

Scroll down to “Outside the Yahoo! Network” and in the final paragraph, click “click here.” Note that this opt-out action is not user specific but machine specific, so you’ll need to do this on every computer you use.